Google images scrapes the internet for any images it can find and then displays them on its search results by hot linking to them. By hotlinking images the bandwidth of the site being hotlinked to is used up instead of the site doing the hotlinking as the image is being loaded directly from the site being hotlinked. This means Google uses up your bandwidth and not Googles. BANDWIDTH ISN’T FREE.

If google using up your bandwidth and stealing your images wasn’t bad enough google doesn’t even send you traffic. Google has opted to just display the image only when users click on the image results essentially stopping users ever visiting the publishers websites.

Many sites rely so much on google search results that they simply accept that this is the way it is and that it is either googles way or the highway even if that means google gets to steal your images and do what it likes.
If you don’t like google stealing your images or you want to just minimize the amount of bandwidth google uses by adding some sort of hotlink protection…. YOUR NOT ALLOWED! according to google as displaying images that do no correlate to images in the search results even if these images are just smaller versions to save bandwidth will land you with a manual action. A manual action is where a disgusting person from google comes along and penalizes your website which basically means you will be nowhere to be found on google whatsoever!

If you think this is disgusting write to your MP as something needs to be done!

Before I get into how to clean up your site I would just like to mention something that will probably make your blood boil if you have been hacked….

If your site has been hacked blame the likes of sites like exploit-db who promote ways to hack peoples sites and create file uploaders, shellcodes and backdoors enabling online criminals to destroy your site and make money form doing so.

As computers get more complex more and more exploits appear and as a results more and more sites are being hacked and exploited by online criminals for purposes that range from spreading malware to seo to help promote there illegal pharmacy websites on search engines.

Exploit-db claims to be a site for so called pen-testers however with there google hacking database exploit-db shares methods for online criminals to find other peoples vulnerable websites to exploit. It is one thing pen-testing your own site to stop it from being hacked but it is another thing entirely using footprints to scrape google to identify other peoples sites.

It is a bit like a burglar telling the police “I was only pen-testing whether the door was secure or not..honest!”

If your site has been hacked it is extremely important you know how it was hacked in the first place if you are going to properly clean it up.

The key to cleaning up a hacked site is finding out the point of entry (the place where the hackers are getting in and wrecking your site) and eliminating it. This is key to cleaning up a site else the hackers are just going to keep on hacking your site no matter how many uploaded files you delete.

Hackers might have compromise your site because of dodgy files you may have uploaded to the site, a virus on your actual computer that allowed the hacker to collect your login details such as for your ftp account or hackers may have exploited the server that your site is hosted with.

Here are some quick and simple steps to ensure that your website is secure if the hack persists even after following these steps then this will mean that it is the server that is being exploited and we suggest that you move hosts to one with better security instead.

We advise that you make sure that your computer is free of viruses before you begin!

1) If you are using a content management system for example wordpress you may want to export your data. In wordpress you can either export your data using the tools>export featue found in your wordpress dashboard or by using extracting the mysql tables from your wordpress database.

It is very important after exporting all of the data that you go through it using a text editor making sure that there are no backdoors that have been added to your data that may let a hacker rehack your site. Look out for anything that does not look right for example php or encoded base64 code.

Once you are happy that there isn’t anything in the exported file that shouldn’t be there move on to step 2.

2) Login into your webhosting control panel. Once logged in please check that that there are no extra ftp users other than you. Then make sure to delete any databases set up on your account.

3) Using a ftp file manager login and delete all files and folders on your site.

4) Log back into you webhost control panel and change your password for both your webhosting account and ftp account.

5) Reinstall a fresh version of your website.
If you are using a content management system like wordpress make sure that this time you do not install any dodgy plugins or themes that could lead to your site being compromised and make sure that you keep your cms updated at all times. Simply reinstalling the themes and plugins that you used before will just lead to your site being compromised again as the point of entry will still be present. It is therefore sensible to find better and more secure themes and plugins to use.

If you use a custom content management system get your web developer to check through the code before reinstalling the site to make sure that there are no vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

By following these steps you ensure that you remove all potential vulnerabilities from your website that could be used as a point of entry for a hacker.

If you find that your site gets hacked even after cleaning up your site and you are confident that there are no vulnerabilities on your site this means that the problem lies with your webhost as the server your hosting your site on is is insecure and has been compromised! In this case until the vulnerability on the server fixed, account passwords changed and all backdoors removed your site will continue to be exploited no matter what you do and how many times you clean up your site.

Make sure you do not use the same password or username that you used before!

It is very important to protect your site against xss attacks. Xss vulnerabilities can crop up if you let users input data and you do not guard against user inputting unsafe characters!

There are a a few different ways a Xss vulnerability can crop up.
If your site automatically echoes out the exact url found in your the url bar for instance through canonical tags (pointless tags for seo pruposes) then you might be in trouble. Also Xss code can be added to search forms that us GET. This is because the site does not either check for certain characters that could allow a hacker to break your code for example “?> or the site does not encode these character when echoing out the tag your site will be vulnerable to an attack.

To check this use the following code:

'';!--"<XSS>=&{()}

Once you have added this code you should now be able to see via the source code as to whether it has broken your html or has been encoded. In some instances if your site does not allow for bad characters there should just a be an error page.

Sometimes though hackers will try to tricks such as filter evasions to trick the system that protects your site from invalid characters by encoding the url themselves. Such as using

%3C

this is a way of encoding the break character >

Remember xss vulnerabilities do not always have to be in the main functions or forms of your site and can be hidden even in the smallest bit of code and forms. If you are running content management systems like wordpress always keep your themes, plugins and install update to and make sure that your webhost uses you should be fine.

Is it right that one company has so much control on the internet that it can effectively make a competitor disappear if it wants…? Well, that is what Google is doing and is getting away with it. I am writing this article to help spread the word of just how powerful Google is and how Google is using its power for, well evil really!

Google’s main source of income is through ad revenue, the fact that Google sells such cheap mobile phones, tablets and computers is not because Google is aiming to make a profit on these devices but to better able to control the search engine market and make more people use Google’s own properties which hopefully will mean more people will be clicking ads.

Google needs people to click on ads and it needs advertisers to buy ad space in the first place but focusing on the aspect of people clicking on ads at the time being, let me mention the fact that Google needs people to stay on website that are either owned by Google or have adwords on them… searchers for instance using Google and choosing to pick a website that would not potentially deny Google with ad revenue at the end is something google hates and wants to make sure doesn’t happen. This is why Google is so biased towards its own properties in the search results you may have noticed that if you search for something on Google you will see that just about Evey search will contain a google property whether a YouTube video or some other Google owned property of which google will be able to further serve the searcher with Google ads even after leaving the search engine.

Another thing I should mention is the ads at the top of the search engine results, it is actually in Google’s best interests that searchers click these rather than the organic listings or else google would not be making any money. Some “SEO” argue that Google must provide relevant, good quality and useful organic search results to ensure that users come back and use the search engine again, but have you ever thought that because Google is used now by habit by so many users and the rather vague distinction between ads and organic listings that can easily trick the non tech minded people that Google may aim to make the organic search results lesser quality to the ads at the top in the effort to improve the click through rate of the ads (CTR). One way Google can and actually is doing to effect the organic search results so that the ads at the top become the best match for users queries is to get rid of websites from the organic listings entirely under the guise that their algorithm have picked up the site as being spam. Google like many other search engines use links to determine if a site is quality or not and puts a lot more emphasis on this than the actual content of a site…. If the algorithm named penguin detects (quite often effecting sites that are not spam) that your website has unnatural links it then automatically pushes that website out of sight in the search results. Because anyone can create links to a site this has given rise to negative seo were competitor website will go out of their way to spam a competing website url everywhere they can on spammy website in order to get their competitor penalized by the penguin algorithm, however this does not concern Google as it is something along diminishing the organic search results that will help Google gain more adwords customers as more small websites that get penalized like this move over to adwords just to be seen.

Google is getting a lot harsher on websites that build links so much so that it has became impossible for website to even link to each other in fear of what Google might think about that link.
With many search queries searchers are being exposed to more and more ads and google properties than ever before it is obvious some that these are not the only results that are potentially available on the internet but Google simply does not want to to show the rest if it is not in their best interest, though many assume that what Google is showing them IS all the available results and simply do not understand that Google may have removed quite a few potential matches to their query… many trust Google to display all the results but are unaware Google is not.. The internet and search engines are a crucial part of communication and even society and search engines are the gateway to finding new information without them it would be near impossible to find what you are looking for, Search engines just like a library categories and sort out the Internets information and like I said many take what they see on the search results as the collection of all the results possible for their query and nothing has been held back thus search engines have a level of responsibility but Google is exploiting this and peoples trust.

You could argue that it is impossibly hard for a search engine to accurately sort the internet and display spam free search results and the penguin algorithm along with the panda algorithm which monitors the actual quality of a site may make mistakes so Google hire thousands of manual reviewers who actually review the internet and have the power to totally remove website that it deems as “spam” form the search results. Because their decision to remove a website is based solely on their own subjective opinion it is questionable as to what sites may be removed solely on the premiss that the manual reviewer does not like what he or she sees on that website and not because it is “spam”.

Manual reviewers will also check to see whether a website is actively selling paid links or being involved in link scheme. As according to Google policy paid for links must not pass link juice and instead should be no follow as to not effect search engines rankings. Yet there has been cases where websites have been penalized upon review on the basis that the website has been involved in a paid link scheme even though they haven’t… Manual reviewers use their judgement to determine if a link is paid for or not and this can become extremely subjective if the website does not actually say that a websites bought a link or not, so mistakes can be made and because the more sites that are penalized and the level of control Google now has in controlling the way people link to each other and the fact that the only acceptable links that are paid for and do not have the rel=”no-follow” tag are Google adwords it gives Google a further edge on the internet.

Online commerce is becoming impossible for small website to get started thanks to google. With such a biased to super brand websites like amazon and ebay (which usually means the top results are dominated by these obvious choice and searcher will then be compelled to go to either google adwords or google shopping results to find alternatives) an easy option to fill the results with it really makes it hard and creates a real need for website to create lots of link to even be able to be in with a chance of competition however this is against googles guidelines and will resort to your website being penalized in the search engine though. It is now also impossible for website to promote their website on other website in fear as being labeled a spammer as gogole and other super giants have created a notion that linking to any external unknown website no matter how useful or good it might be and no matter how you do it is spam and the fear google has created in webmasters to not allow this to happen or else their website may be penalized for linking to “spam” websites means that small businesses have no where to go… only adwords or google shopping.

The internet has become a really important part of peoples social and business lives. Search engines have been around since the World wide web began in the early 90’s and it has been the search engines that have made order of and made it possible to surf the internet quickly and efficiently because search engines are so important and without them the internet would not function properly it also means that search engines must be responsible and not exploit their position as they are too trusted and accepted by the general public. Ignoring the issues I have mentioned above would be foolish and niave, after all now the internet is such a big part of our lives if one single company has vast control over the availability of what we see on the internet then this is truly bad!

The government must act! If this is not exploitative and using their competitive edge to destroy other competitors then I do not know what else is!

Google executives have a lot of cash… Larry page and Sergey Brinn who created Google are estimated to worth around $30 billion yet they are still after more and the way these Google executive get more is by wrecking other peoples businesses. They are fueled by greed however let this be a reminder to be a GOOD PERSON! You cannot take your money with you when you die. If you are not a good person your going to go to hell no matter how rich you are.

In the news today a Google executive has died in a car crash unfortunately it wasn’t Larry Page or Sergey Brinn.. but it was a high ranking “Googler” from the UK thus evil. There is no name out there at the minute of who the executive was but this does go to show that evil greedy people cannot have their cake and eat it!
This comes only a couple of weeks ago another Google executive died on top of mount Everest when the nepal earthquake struck.

It is highly unlikely that the Google executive saw the car crash coming and so probably didn’t repent from his greedy ways.. I guess the Google project to find ways to live forever didnt work then for this executive.

Google actively seeks and destroys peoples online businesses (because anyone not paying google and making money via Google search is stealing according to Larry page(he actually said that)). Google knows that 90% of online businesses are reliant on search traffic yet Google having a 80% search engine market share tries exploits and censors many peoples online websites.. just so they can push more people into buying adwords.
In some cases Google will kill a site all together by removing the website entirely from the search index meaning nobody will realistically see that site ever again. Why? Well Google will say it is because of pure spam claiming the site is gibberish or using erogenous spam techniques.. in many cases these sites are not spam at all. It just there greed at work!

Google deceives consumers even more, a line must be drawn! Though Google doesnt seem to think so and has recently removed its own line separator which helps distinguish ads from normal listings further blending the ads into the normal results. With no separation between ads and normal results Google is deceiving its users and breaking anti competitive laws harming consumers.
Through out the year we have documented the changes that Google has made to its ads.. all the changes Google has made has blurred the distinction between ads and organic listings there have been no changes to improve the distinction. The problem is so bad (considering that google has a monopoly on internet search and thus a huge grip on the internet) the eu is putting forward a case against Google that it is being anti competitive and harming consumers. Google has 10 weeks to respond to EU claims that Google is being anti competitive and is being BIASED by showing its own properties such as Google shopping in front of everything else. If the EU case against Google comes to the conclusion that Google is breaking the law (which is obviously is) Google could be forced to change how it displays its ad and could be fined up to 10% of Google’s global profits.. which equates to around £4.4 billion.

As always Google stands by its ads and deception which the arrogant response that they are not anti competitive.

PS, If you thought their ads were anti competitive wait till they unleash their plans to rank sites based upon facts which will take anti competitive behavior to a whole new level.

Google maybe planning to rank sites based upon the facts (according to what Google thinks is right or wrong) instead of ranking factors used at the moment such as links. If Google incorporates the technology it has bragged about in a recent scientific paper Google could use it to censor information that it does not want being seen by any of its 1 billion unique visitors per month giving them the power to extinguish any ideologies that go against Google’s own! Controlling what information is seen and what is not is a power no company should ever have and has dire consequences for us all!

Why this is bad for freedom of speech!

As the internet grows and more and more people get connected to the internet the is now the most used way of gaining and communicating information in our informational age, freedom of speech and a uncensored internet is vital therefore for both freedom, democracy, society and culture. However Google may have plans to control the availability of information on the internet through censoring websites that it deems to be communicating ideas that goes against the points of view of Google.

Search engines are and have always have been a utility of the internet to find information and websites that they do not know about already.
Google’s worldwide search engine market share is a staggering 88% with the next popular search engines Yahoo and Bing trialling behind both at 4% which goes to show Google monopoly and tight grip it has on internet search. It is quite reasonable then to say that to be seen by the vast majority of people your site needs to be on Google else you wont be found!

Many websites have already fallen fowl to Googles “lack of morals” as many small websites have been penalized by algorithms named by Google as penguins and panda created to to reduce spam on Google but with the added benefit of penalizing small sites as well pushing them out of site and forcing them to buy view-ability via adwords.

However things are about to get a lot worse for website owners and for freedom of speech on the internet!

With Google huge market share it is no surprise that Google wants to take full advantage of it. A recent paper Google has published suggests Google’s plans to control what information can be seen on the internet once and for all! If Google does what it outlines in its research paper about ranking sites according to facts by checking facts against facts it has in its knowledge Google could easily then censor any website that publishes “information” on the internet that Google does not want people to see!

In the research paper Google explains that it wants to make the internet a more truthful place and to get rid of popular high page rank websites that now rank at the top of the search engines but show information that is not true. However the technique used to extract facts from a site and to evaluate them with the knowledge base would take a lot of effort and computer power to simply eliminate popular website from the search engines that are ranking because other websites owners actually liked what the site has had to say regardless of whether the information in googles eyes is right or not and linked to them. This is implies that there is something more to it it than just demoting these kind of websites.

No more innovation
With Googles massive market share along with the fact that Google has already destroyed many websites many will not want to get on the wrong side of google this will mean that many will not want to write anything that maybe considered by google as not “right” this will starve the internet of original ideas and information as the vast majority of websites owners aim to create content based upon knowledge based facts(most facts from the knowledge base are ripped from wikiepdia)

Used to censor the internet of ideas Google doesn’t like
It is important to mention now that Google is one of the biggest government lobbyist in the US which goes to show there lack of respect for democracy.. and your freedom. Google really couldn’t careless about the general public and if they incorporate the technology published in their research paper they could easily use it to manipulate the search results to penalize sites that publish opinions of ideas that are “incorrect” allowing Google to manipulate everyone’s knowledge of what right or wrong across the world! Google will be able to censor freedom of speech and to promote only what it wants to be promoted for its own gain!

It would seem that bing is no better than google when it comes to ads or greed!

Bing is displaying so many ads which push the organic listings way down.. so far down that only 1 real result will be viewable without having to scroll down.. and the vast majority of the time this real result will either be ebay or amazon.. ouch this surely makes bing a pretty bad search engine if it struggles to provide searches unique and worthwhile results (its hardly worthwhile searching if users are just directed to a bunch of ads or simply a bunch of obvious results).

Is bing trying to trick its users into clicking its ads or is bing just being greedy when it comes to displaying its ads? Well, it is one or the other. Despite falling behind google when it comes to the search engine market share bing isn’t doing much to strengthen its position by providing results that aren’t cluttered with ads…..Instead of providing searchers to what they really want bing displays above the fold a huge section of ads to searchers that look exactly like search results.. the only clue that these results are not actual organic search results is that there is a slight background color and a very hard to see and small ad label at the top.

Here is an example:

This is a simple search for arch support insoles. Bing should provide a list of acreddited and trustworthy medical websites for searches related to arch support insoles because purchasing such products relies upon proper medical understanding and knowledge. If you are suffering from foot pain and discomfort for example plantar fasciitis which maybe caused by underlining mechanical and functional problems found in your feet simply buying a random pair of insoles can make your problem much worse. Simply directed searches to ebay or random insole providers that simply buy themselves to the top of the search results is irresponsible.

Since writing about Google’s deceptive ads Google has since reduced the size of their “ad” labels making the ads even harder to distinguish from regular search results.

Here are some examples to make your blood boil…

After search for running shoes I was presented with lots of “ads” and as you can see from the screenshot the ads blend almost totally in with the non paid listings even more so than they did before with reducing of the “ad” label. On the right hand column there is a list of running shoe websites which are paid for listings however to a normal user it is unclear whether these are normal or sponsored listings as the “ad” tag is not present next to them.With something as specialist as Running shoes it is important to buy your shoes from a specialist because you need buy some what fit correctly and support your feet in the right way when you run however the problem with Google search results is that any non specialist website can get pride of placement in the search results without any real specialism towards running just a big wallet.After searching for playstation 4 I was given a set of misleading results whereby a number of shopping results popped up. It is very unclear whether these “results” are ads or not.

Google implies that they may get compensated for shopping results. This is misleading and deceptive as Google always gets compensated for all the results in their shopping channel.

A patent has been recently granted to google that indicates that google maybe using ad data it collects from its advertisers to better understand website and thus improve their search engines rankings which some may argue breaches ftc guidelines, Google have always stood by the notion that websites that run google adsense on their sites do not automatically boost these site in the search results but we are not talking about adsense sites however this patent is not limited to just ad data collected through adwords but also adsense ads served on a site could help the search engines learn more about the site as well…It is all very confusing.

There is no doubt that if google is doing what is stated in this patent means that google instead of displaying what should be unbiased search results but rather starts adding in ad data to rank the search results then you start getting into anti competition grounds as improving sites that either serve internet users with more adsense ads will generate Google with more revenue as opposed to serving what the users really wants or boosting sites with adwords may bring more website to buy into the adwords program.

This recent granted patent was first filled way back in 2003 (It has taken 11 years for the patent office to process this patent) so potentially google may have been using technology using this patent for 11 years. If Google has been using ad data to improve the search engines results it breaks it definitely creates many questions about the credibility of the search results.

Patents cost money and time to create so why would google make a patent that they were not planning on using? And why didn’t the patent office see that this could break many anti competition laws and act in the 11 years they took to process this particular patent?